


Safe As Houses

by igrockspock



Category: Sleepy Hollow (TV)
Genre: Bechdel Test Pass, Family, Gen, Siblings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-13
Updated: 2014-04-13
Packaged: 2018-01-19 07:32:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,095
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1460992
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/igrockspock/pseuds/igrockspock
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Jenny wakkes up in the hospital and Abbie's not there, she knows something's wrong.  And then she goes to Purgatory to get her sister back.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Safe As Houses

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Bay](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bay/gifts).



"The Devil was sloppy," Jenny says. Her head is pounding. She opens her eyes a sliver and shuts them again. Too much light. No good. Is she hung over? No. She flexes her fingers, feels stiff cotton sheets against them. The air smells like antiseptic. The hospital, then. Right. _The Devil was sloppy_. Crashed her car, but didn't check to make sure she died. If Jenny had wanted someone dead, she would've done better than that.

"What did you say, Ms. Mills?" the voice by her bed is quiet and steady. _Fuck_. A nurse, the kind that works in the psych ward. Jenny stays quiet.

"Something about the devil?" the voice prompts. 

_Moloch_ , Jenny almost says. It's imprecise, calling him the Devil, and Jenny likes her things in order. But she bites her tongue. You don't go talking about the Devil in the hospital - hadn't she learned that a long time ago?

She slides her fingernails under the adhesive tape on her wrist. It comes off easily, taking the IV needle with it.

"Ms. Mills, you have a concussion. We need you to stay overnight --"

Jenny forces her eyes open for real this time, ignoring the pain in her head.

"Yeah, well, I need to go," she says.

The nurse purses her lips, and Jenny sees she's standing in the doorway, her fingers inches from the call button.

"You're under legal guardianship. You can't leave without your sister's consent, and we haven't been able to reach her."

 _Right_. Jenny puts her feet on the floor anyway. The cold tile sends a shock all the way up her legs. Her head is swimming. Still, she manages to stand without holding onto the bed rail. She can do this - so what if it feels like Moloch himself is clawing at her insides when she breathes?

"Anything besides the concussion?" she asks. 

The nurse shakes her head. "Deep tissue bruising from the seat belt, a few cracked ribs. All in all, you were very lucky. But you need to get back in bed." The nurse takes a step toward her, and Jenny schools herself not to flinch -- that makes her look defensive, and that makes the nice people in white coats think she's crazy.

"Do I need my sister's permission to pee?" she asks. She saunters to the bathroom as casually as she can without waiting for the nurse's answer. Of course, the door lock is flimsy, but Jenny hadn't been expecting better. At least there are no bars on the windows, so she's not on a psych hold. That's good news. She's on the first floor, even better. 

She hears the door open outside. Another nurse coming in, probably. And sure enough, they're talking about her; she can tell by the little snatches of words, like "uncooperative" and "sedation." 

"Ms. Mills, are you alright in there?" the new nurse calls.

"Sure am," she says. She flushes the toilet for effect. "Just washing my hands." She turns the water up to high, the better to camouflage the sound of the window opening. When her feet hit the ground, she curls her toes into the grass and runs her fingers over the brick wall outside. It feels warm and real and reassuring, nothing like the cold white interior, where it's hard to remember she's the sane one. Of course, nothing screams "crazy" quite like a bandaged, barefoot girl in a hospital gown, but she knows what to do. This isn't exactly her first hospital escape.

The entrance to the ER isn't too far away, and she slips in easily behind two GSW's.

"Road rage?" she hears the nurses ask.

"Fourth one today," the paramedic says. "Don't know what's happening."

Jenny does. It's the start of a war.

The ER is more crowded than she's ever seen it, the triage full and nurses in scrubs bustling back and forth. The chaos makes it easy to sneak into the physicians' locker room, where she helps herself to a change of clothes and somebody's handbag. There are keys in the purse, but Jenny decides not to use them; with her busted head and black eye, she doesn't look like the kind of girl who'd drive a BMW. Instead, she saunters out to the long-term parking lot, where she hotwires the most non-descript car she can find. She doesn't breathe till she's driven halfway across town.

She didn't _mean_ to drive to Abbie's apartment, but she finds herself there anyway, staring at the neat hedge and the cute little red door. The neighborhood makes her shiver. Look at all these cookie cutter duplexes lined up in a row, lawns trimmed, dogs barking, white curtains drifting out of open windows. Like the apocalypse isn't coming, like the signs haven't been here for months. God fucked up when He left complacence off the list of seven deadly sins, Jenny thinks -- except she doesn't believe in god. Just in Moloch.

And Abbie had been one of them, abandoning her to live in a nice, safe dollhouse just like the one they'd played with when they were little. For some reason, the thought makes her shiver hard, and she watches a crow fly off Jenny's roof and vanish into the sky. Jenny shakes her head; she can feel the familiar bitterness rising up inside her, and she's not going down that road again. Not today or any other. The Headless Horseman left her for dead, and Abbie wasn't at the hospital when she woke up. She doesn't need a crow to tell her how wrong that is.

There's a phone in the purse she stole -- without a pass code, thank goodness -- and she dials into her voicemail to listen to Ichabod's message one last time.

"Ms. Mills, I haven't much time. There is a prophecy." His voice catches. "It claims I will betray your sister. Naturally, I do not intend to do so, and if I should, I hope you will dispose of me as you see fit. In any case, I find it prudent to tell you how you might access purgatory" -- his voice catches again -- "should the need arise."

Jenny repeats the incantation to herself while she drives toward the woods. When the speedometer hits seventy-five, she grits her teeth and switches to cruise; the last thing she needs right now is a cop on her ass. It's surprising how much of this battle happens out in some forest, she thinks; with the pace of development these days, you'd think Armageddon might start at Target or Starbuck's.

When she finds Abbie's car parked at the edge of the woods, she pulls in beside it and swallows.

"Abbie!" she yells. "Abbie, if you're here, answer me!"

There's no sound except her car door slamming shut. That's not right, Jenny thinks, straining her ears. The wilderness is never silent, but here it is - no insects, no birds, and the brush barely even crunches underfoot. Creepy, but on the bright side, she's definitely found the right place. She hikes through the woods, following Abbie and Ichabod's footprints, trying to picture herself opening the gates to Purgatory inside a Wal-Mart. It would be funnier if Wal-Mart weren't some creepy earth version of Purgatory anyway.

She almost passes the place because it looks so ordinary. She'd thought, after everything they'd experienced here, it would stand out in her mind more. But then, maybe Abbie had been right -- after everything, it was just a patch of woods, with no more power over their lives than what they chose to give it.

She looks down at her hands. They're empty. Her car keys are in her pocket, along with the stolen phone. Should she have brought something else? Holy Water, maybe? A sword? But right now, she's all she's got -- one woman, ready to rescue, die for, or bargain for the life of the only person she loves.

So she says the magic words and walks through the door.

***

She opens her eyes in a dark forest. Shadows flit around the edges of her vision, but that's not what frightens her. She's seen this place in her dreams before. What scares her is the feeling here: like nothing around her is quite right, but she's the most wrong of all. This whole world is _waiting_ ; the seconds tick by so heavily she can feel them all the way down to her bones, every one exactly the same as the last. Then she realizes why this place feels so familiar: it's just like the asylum. She's spent half her damn life in purgatory, and now she's come back all on her own.

Her laugh pierces the silence, jagged and high and a little crazy, but none of the shadows turn to look. Jenny smirks at them in the darkness. Let them come if they want to. She lived in the shadows too long to be afraid of the dark. Whistling an old tune Corbin used to sing, she puts one foot in front of the other until a path appears to lead her through the forest. 

"You have _got_ to be kidding me," Jenny mutters when she finds the doll house nestled among the trees. Leave it to her sister to find safety in an elaborate caricature of the American dream. 

There's a dull thud coming from the house, as if someone is pounding on the walls inside. Jenny thinks of herself that first time at the asylum and shudders.

"Abbie? You in there?" she calls.

"Jenny?" Abbie's voice is high and thin, like she's been running and can't catch her breath, but she sounds alright. Jenny breathes a small sigh of relief.

"I told you you couldn't leave me," she says. "We gotta get you out of here."

"Jenny, it's not that simple." Abbie's voice is slow and authoritative now, her cop voice. "You didn't eat anything here, did you?"

Jenny snorts. "You see anything here to eat?" She wasn't picking any apples off the trees, that was for damn sure.

"You didn't fall into some fantasy when you came here? No one offered you food?" 

_Oh_. Jenny had read something about that, a long time ago, in a book the hospital hadn't known she had. "Guess the devil doesn't have anything to offer me," she says. "I'm living the life I want to live." Crazy as it sounds, it's true. She's not locked up, her sister doesn't think she's crazy, and she's fighting the apocalypse just like she trained to do. What more could a girl want, really?

Abbie's face appears at the edge of one of the windows. "Good," she says, her voice determined. "Then you can go."

"Nope." Jenny shakes her head. "Not without you."

"Jenny, it's dangerous here. Moloch will come, and when he finds you--"

"He's not coming," Jenny says, and for the first time today, she's scared. _Really_ scared. The dark presence she's felt stalking her for fifteen years is gone, and that can only mean one thing. "Moloch's not here, Abbie. He thinks I'm dead and you're trapped. He's unleashed the second horseman, and he's out there, somewhere, waiting for his chance to come back to Earth. We have to get you out of here, Abbie, now."

But Abbie's still shaking her head. "I told you, it's not that simple. Nobody can leave this place without being judged, not unless someone takes their place, and I'm not about to let you do that."

Jenny smirks. "Does it say who you have to be judged by? Because I'll have you know I judged you twice today already. I drove past your stupid little apartment with the perfect paint and the cute hedge --"

Abbie gasps indignantly, familiar anger clouding her face. "My apartment isn't _stupid_."

"I know," Jenny says softly. "I understand now. But who better to judge you than a sister? I looked at that apartment and for a minute I hated you for hiding yourself away in a safe little house and refusing to see what was happening around you. And I judged you again when I saw you here in this dollhouse. I thought it was another place to hide from reality. But you were smart, Abbie. You made yourself a safe place to heal, and when it was time to fight, you didn't hesitate. I used to hate you for leaving me, but it wasn't your fault. We were both scared, and we were both too young. I forgive you."

Jenny tugs on the flimsy plastic door, and it comes off in her hand.

"Come out, Abbie," she says. "We're going home together."


End file.
